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Friday, October 1, 2010

#62: Jack Cashill

Cashill is another one of Worldnetdaily’s columnists and resident conspiracy theorists. A brave journalist and author of several books (e.g. ”What is wrong with California”, a response to the famous ”What is wrong with Kansas”), never afraid to judiciously select which evidence he’ll focus on or for that matter lie through his teeth about. Cashill is reliably moving between the most ridiculous claims and examples of conspiracy mongering of the wingnuts on the far right. His coverage of the Richard Sternberg case is a telling example; this one also gives an excellent illustration of how the minds of creationist believers in the Grand Darwinian Conspiracy work. Cashill also famously reviewed Expelled, but I refuse to link to his review. It’s – predictably – hysterical, extremely sloppy, dishonest and incoherent; even the Kansas Board of Education has had to take Cashill to task for misrepresenting their views (in his ardently sympathetic defense of them). That says quite a lot. His staunch creationist credentials (and dishonesty) is documented here as well.

That he is a climate change denier is hardly a surprise. His linking of this to the ”Darwinist conspiracy” might contain some novelties; again, I refuse to link to the original. But of course this is expected (standard crank magnetism – all the creationist think tanks are also climate change deniers; it’s easy when you already believe that science is a liberal conspiracy).

But Cashill is actually most famous for series of essays concerning his theory that Barack Obama's autobiography ”Dreams From My Father” was ghostwritten by former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Again, I’m providing no links.

Diagnosis: Utterly unhinged wingnut, delusional and angry and mentally crippled by confirmation bias. His impact is uncertain, but he is, in fact, a modestly popular writer.

4 comments:

This is rather priceless. Cashill comes out of the closet as an ... anti-birther - apparently he found himself a conspiracy theory even more arbitrary and insane than the standard birther ones - one according to which Obama comes out as a covert American.

Hah, even Joseph Farah himself has admitted that the garbled insanity of Cashill may have contained some misinformation after Cashill procured solid evidence of his birther claims by very incompetent photoshopping.

Cashill's belated comment on the Trayvon Martin case. According to Cashill Martin was playing the knockout game. How does he back it up? He doesn't need to. Martin was black, and that settles things for Cashill.